


It Feels Like I've Lost Something

by MissNessarose



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Magda is a badass like seriously, Magda is best mom, Mutant kidnapping, Post-DOFP, Rescue Mission, Sad, Sad boos, Sibling Fluff, You go honey, so much sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 11:01:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4302285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissNessarose/pseuds/MissNessarose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Pentagon, they come to take her son. Refusal is not an option. And in the end, she never really gets him back...</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Feels Like I've Lost Something

**Author's Note:**

> Without giving away too much, a few notes on naming/ideas:  
> -I'm going with Days of Future Past-canon and just calling Pietro Peter to stick with canon  
> -His mother never really had a name so I'm just going to call her Magda to help myself out with keeping names and faces  
> -The little girl in the film (who is not Wanda, I'm 99% sure) is going to be Lorna, as I enjoy that theory  
> -And, as will be noted, Wanda IS around. She's just not currently present.  
> -I'm using Alex as my familiar face since half of the kids Charles had with him in First Class are defective from his side or dead (unless that timeline didn't count, but I'm not messing with the timelines), and I'm assuming that he went back to the mansion after he got out of Vietnam. 
> 
> ...that's about it! Strap yourselves in and GRAB SOME TISSUES FOR THIS FEELS TRIP KDIS

She had seen many, many people come to that front door on what had started as a perfectly good day, asking for her son and bearing some trace of wreckage, theft, or general devastation and destruction. And so often had she cleaned up whatever mess it was that apologizing for Peter came as second nature. Hell, some times when she introduced her kids, she apologized for him in _advance._ Magda knew he wasn't a bad kid, either—no, just...reckless, as she so liked to remind the neighbors when they came complaining that their backyard fences were in pieces, _again._

Disgruntled neighbors—not that said neighbors were delightful or tolerant people to begin with—and the police coming to her front door asking for her son were all too common.

Federal agents, on the other hand, were _not._

“Mrs. Maximoff?”

She sighed, braced herself with a smile, and knew immediately that the day would not turn out to be a good one.

 

Despite everything inside her head screaming at her to run, to get the kids and simply run, she knew that it was out of the question. It was too late, far too late, to get out of the situation, and perhaps she always knew that things would catch up with her eventually. She couldn't imagine anything harder than the struggle of raising a mutant child—let alone three!—and had simply done her best, with various jobs to make ends meet, and keep everything in the house running smoothly by herself.

The kids meant well—they really did, honestly, it was just so difficult for them to control themselves not knowing what they were or what they could do. And years of covering up everything, of making up excuses to the schoolboard and the neighbors was beginning to look more and more suspicious to outsiders. No, the constant lying wouldn't last forever, but she had always hoped that it would be enough until they were out of school, or could at least control themselves a little bit better. Then, they could move again, or...well, she'd think of something, eventually.

She did love them, like any mother should. She loved them more, even, knowing that the rest of the world wanted to come knocking on her front door with their pitchforks and sharp tongues and ambition raised high, wishing to strike her special little children dead.

The first time that Peter ran to get a ball he'd sent flying down the street and was back when she'd turned around, or when Wanda had sneezed and a dresser caught fire, any other mother would have backed away and run screaming. Not her: she knew in that moment that she would help them and raise them as best she could, even if it meant years of hiding from the rest of the snotty suburb they lived in.

Then Lorna came—entirely unexpected, but a blessing nonetheless—and there were three children to worry about and bring up. Shortly after that, the accidental fires (various household objects, the neighbor's cat) were too often to cover up, and when Wanda put another boy in her algebra class into a coma for two weeks, it had to stop. Her options then were either to let the rumors rise and the police intervene, or to put Wanda under psychiatric care in an institution.

She took the latter option, wondering if maybe it was what she should have done in the first place, when her daughter began to manifest her powers and show miniscule signs of a psychological disturbance. In the end, they had to drag Wanda away, kicking and screaming and crying, with Peter yelling while his mother held him back, but Magda told him through her own tears that it was better that way. Even when, maybe, it wasn't.

It wasn't easy, but she did it anyways. She had to, to keep her safe. To keep her family safe.

 

The last person to come asking for Peter had been that Charles Xavier, who, in retrospect, she should have kept out anyways. She had never wanted her kids caught up in any political drama—all the more reason for people on the street to scowl at them and come hunting them down—and she hadn't even known that they were going to let her son be in charge of a break-in until he was already gone, and the video was all over the news.

Her son, _breaking into the Pentagon._

And, as expected, the government came knocking on her door several months later.

There is still coffee in the pot when they come by, and sends little Lorna off upstairs while she passes around mugs and sits them all down on the sofa. There are only four men, all in dark glasses and black suits. One takes his own glasses off, if only to look her firmly in the eye with an expression that, though charismatic, is tinted with suspicion and malicious intent.

She can  _feel it._

He looks at her and smiles, and he simply says, “We'd like to talk about your son.”

“I figured as much.”

“So you know what he is?”

The man spits a little when _'what'_ rolls off his tongue, the same way that people always say _'whore'_ or _'lunatic'_. Her blood begins to run cold.

“Yes, I do. He's never harmed anyone, please.”

“He let a convicted murderer out of one of the most highly-guarded facilities in this country, ma'am. And I believe that that's putting it lightly. I'm sure that you've seen the tapes?”

Yes, she had; someone had leaked them out to all the stations after the incident. It wasn't as bad as they were making it out to be, she thought—he had run along the walls, merely a blur, scattered a few bullets to save a few lives, and trashed things up a bit. Virtually harmless, if not heroic.

“Yes. And I'd rather you not lock him up just like...”

The word ' _father_ ' brushes across Magda's conscience, but she doesn't dare speak it.

“...like that, do you hear me? He didn't know what he was doing, they pulled him along. He doesn't need that. You can, I don't know, fine me or do what you want to us, but don't lock him up. It would drive him mad, and you don't want that on your hands.”

The man across from her leans forward so that his elbows touch the coffee table, and he smiles such a sick little smirk that she can almost feel the bile rising in her throat.

“Lock him up? No, no, I agree with you. Instead, may I propose something else?”

She sips at her coffee, just as cold and bitter as her tone. “You may.”

“We suggest a sort of...operation? We have a facility, you see.”

“Maybe I don't,” she snaps.

“It's fine to be hostile, ma'am, I understand your concern—”

“I'm only as hostile as you make me,” she replies shortly.

He laughs. “Please, Mrs. Maximoff, hear us out. Really, it's in your best interests—we're offering to _correct_ your son.”

She doesn't think that Peter needs to be “ _corrected”,_ as they say. And she doesn't like the way that he presents that option, either. Correction could mean any number of things, and none of them pleasant.

“And if I refuse?”

The man reaches to his colleague for a neatly-printed form or two, and he clicks a pen, offering it to her across the table.

“I don't think that you'd like to know what refusing our offer would mean for your family.”

It's then that she knows she has no other choice, and she reaches to sign the papers with a trembling hand. Before the tip of it can even hit the paper, a voice echoes from the hallway behind her.

“Hey, mom, do you know where I—”

Peter, empty carton of orange juice in one hand, is frozen in the arch of the first floor hallway, his eyes fixed on the sinister men sitting in the living room. The other three men tense, their hands reflexively straying to their pockets. Magda never considered that they would have brought guns, but now she can see the outlines against their suit jackets.

“Peter! Sweetheart, let's talk for a little bit, alright?”

She drops the pen and excuses herself to herd Peter back into the hallway. The door on the right—her bedroom—is the closest, but she hopes that it's far enough to mask their conversation together. Maybe, she thinks, these men will be decent enough to offer a mother some privacy.

“Who are they?” he asks quickly, the instant after she shuts the door. “Why are they in our house? What—”

“Shh,” she hisses softly, quieting him with a motion of her hands. He puts the orange juice on the bedside table, and looks at her with a fear she hasn't seen in his eyes for a long, long time.

“What do they want?” he says, quieter than before.

“I...”

There's no nice way to say it to him. Before she can explain, he knows.

“They're here for me, aren't they?”

He's seventeen, too old for lies, and she knows that he'll want the truth. She can't bear to say 'yes', and when she nods, tears begin to line her eyes.

“Oh, god,” Peter whispers. “It's a government thing, isn't it?”

Magda sits back on the bed, shaking, and she pulls him into her lap like he were only six again, having just run smack into the hallway because he couldn't see where he was going with that long silver hair in his eyes. She holds him, and she cries, because she knows already that she has lost him.

“Mom, it's okay.” He kisses the top of her head, and holds her back, and she wonders how, knowing that it is _his_ life at stake, he can be so brave. “We knew we couldn't hide forever. What do they....want? What are they gonna do?”

She takes a deep breath and wipes at her eyes. “Not prison. They said they wouldn't. I don't know exactly what they're going to do...they want to....to fix you, they said.”

“ _Fix_ me?” He removes himself, looking curiously at her. “Like, fix the mutation? Medically?”

“That's certainly what it sounded like.”

It can't be all bad, she thinks: she doesn't know the exact details, of course, which is enough of a red flag, but in the end, he'll be _normal._ He won't have to worry for the rest of his life, he can be just as regular as anyone else on the street. She hopes that it will make his life that much easier.

“I understand if you're upset,” she says gently.

“Upset?”

Magda has rarely heard his voice this quiet, but when she looks up, the frustration and the anger on his face is much more than she had expected.

“ _Upset?”_

“Peter, please.”

“What's _wrong_ with you?”

He says it with such ferocity that it strikes something deep in her. She couldn't protect them. She couldn't protect _any_ of them. She has failed them.

Magda buries her head in her hands and doesn't try to stop him.

“You have Wanda institutionalized, and now you're letting them—letting them _fix_ me, like it's nothing more than neutering a _dog_ , and then what? Huh? What next? What about Lorna—what about _her?”_

“Lorna is fine, Peter.”

“You know she won't be. Not if this keeps up. You don't even know what they'll be doing! You're just going to sign your name and hand me over like it's nothing? Trading baseball cards? Here, have my kid. Go ahead, really!”

“Peter! You don't understand!”

She doesn't even form a full sentence, and instead her words taper off into a wail that startles her son into silence.

“...mom? Mom, I'm sorry, I....I'm just scared.”

His lip trembles, and he's on the floor, hugging her knees and crying into her lap. With a strange sort of tenderness, she pets his hair, and thinks that no other boy will have that beautiful silver hair.

“I'm doing this because I love you, Peter...because I think you deserve so much better.”

He thinks about it for a moment: of a normal life that he's never been able to have.

“And because they didn't give me a choice.”

She doesn't need to elaborate for him to know what she means: something unspoken, tragic, and ultimately terrible. They would probably all die. Him, his mother, Wanda (they would find her somehow), and then—

“Mama?”

Lorna opens the door with all the quiet that a six-year-old can, and she pokes her head into the bedroom, staring with wide, frightened eyes.

“I'm right here.”

She runs to Magda, taking the place by her knees when Peter moves. “Mama, there are men in the living room. They're scary.”

“I know there are, honey. I was just talking to them.”

“They don't look very nice,” Lorna says pointedly, and Magda can only agree with her. “What are they here for?”

“Well...”

Peter stands up, brushes himself off, and nods at her over Lorna's head. ' _I'll go,'_ he mouths to her.

“They're here for your brother.”

Lorna turns her head to him, and frowns. She was too young to remember when they'd sent Wanda away, and he was all she knew as far as older siblings went. She pouts.

“Why? Where's Peter going?”

How to explain this to a kid...?  
“I'm going to see a few doctors,” Peter says to her, meeting her gaze with a smile. “That's all. It might be awhile, but it's going to be okay.”

Lorna frowns. “You're not sick.”

“No, these are special doctors.”

Peter sits down on the floor, crosses his legs, and he takes Lorna's tiny hands when she walks over to him.

“Special?”

“They're going to take away the thing that makes me go so fast.”

Her expression deflates. “But I like it! We go to the park, and you run me around, and it's so fun!”

“Well, some people don't like it. And those men are going to take me somewhere where they'll make me better, okay?”

“But I can make the forks fly sometimes, and they don't come for me,” Lorna points out, and Peter hushes her before anyone in the living room can hear her. The last thing they would want is for Lorna to get caught up in this—and she'd only just started levitating the silverware recently, anyhow.

“Yeah, well, I'm older, and I...I just have to go, Lorna. You understand?”

For a second, Magda thinks that she'll start screaming and fighting, throwing her arms around, but she doesn't. Lorna is very quiet, and then she cries. She bursts into sobs, throwing her arms around Peter, all tears and a runny nose and a sort of high-pitched wailing that comes from deep inside of her.

“You can't go! I need you! We have to go to the park, and go out to see the puppies at the store, and build forts, and play princess, and, and......and I like your mac and cheese better!”

Any other time, Magda would be bitter about the age-old feud in this household (resulting from Lorna liking the way Peter makes mac and cheese more than her mother's, for some random, picky-six-year-old reason), but not now.

Tenderly, Peter smiles. For Lorna.

“I know, kiddo. She doesn't do it right, does she?” Lorna shakes her head so wildly that he swears it might come off. When she turns back to face him, Peter wipes away her tears with his thumbs. “But mom's mac and cheese is just going to have to do, okay? Stiff upper lip, kid.”

“I don't want you to go!” Her wailing raises in pitch, but he merely picks her up and pats her hair in a meager effort to calm her down. Once her crying begins to subside, he places her in his mother's arms and heads back out to the living room.

Magda watches him go with a stiff smile and half-dry eyes, and she wonders if, all these years, she could have done something different.

\- - - -

He stares at the room in the basement and wonders how he could possibly pack a single suitcase out of everything thrown around. First, some clothes—definitely this band t-shirt or his favorite pair of jeans. He figures, though, that it's a hospital, and they'll have something like a gown or other, so clothes aren't the biggest worry.

A picture is a must, and he takes two (one of him and Wanda, a few years ago, and another of himself, his mother, and Lorna on his back) and he puts it on top of everything, with a few of his favorite records underneath and a box or two of too-sugary gas station confectioneries he stole last week.

There are footsteps on the stairs, and he almost thinks that it's his mother, or one of the stiff men from the living room. But these footsteps are so light that he barely hears them, and then Lorna is at the foot of the steps with still-wet eyes, looking sadly at him from across the basement.

“What is it, kiddo?”

Wordlessly, she creeps to his bed where the suitcase is laid, and she takes the princess crown from her head and places it inside, along with her tasseled fairy wand.

“Those always made me better when I was sick,” she tells him sternly. When she had her tonsils taken out, Peter had had ice cream tea parties with her in her room, and the following week had been filled with princess ice cream parties that followed occasionally until she had recovered. “You need them more than I do now.”

“Oh, Lorna.” He sank to his knees and kissed her cheek, cradling her as she cried into his shoulder. “Thanks, kid. I'll be sure to keep them safe for you, okay? Are you sure you don't need them while I'm gone?”

She sniffs sadly. “Playing princess isn't the same without you. I won't need them until you get back.”

“Well, let's head upstairs then, okay?”

“Okay.” She takes his hand in hers, and walks with him and his suitcase up the stairs and out into the living room, where Magda stands, the four agents beside her.

“Ready to go?”

Magda sighs as if she has to prepare herself for this more than Peter will, and she hands the signed forms back to the agent, who heads out the front door after the other three.

“Yeah.”

He's not as confident as he sounds, but he manages to fake it very, very well. He hands Lorna's tiny palm off to his mother, despite the fact that his little sister is crying again, and trying so hard to move back to Peter's grip. He kisses his mother, and it feels like it may be the last for a long while.

“I'll be okay,” he tells her, with a grin that she can't mirror. He follows the men out to the front lawn—the long, black car does nothing to ease his fears—and Lorna waits in the doorway with his mother, the screen door open behind them. Her lip quivers and she moves to run to him.

“Peter!”

The agents stiffen, one reaching again to his pocket, but Lorna simply buries herself against Peter's legs and dissolves into sobs.

“Hey, it's okay.” He ruffles her hair, kneels down, and kisses her on the cheek. “I'm gonna be just fine. Go on back to mom, okay? You have to keep her safe for me.”

She backs away, and dries her eyes with one chubby hand, then nods, and heads back to her mother's side with a quietness that is too uncharacteristic.

He waves at them and feels something like paranoia when he sits down in the backseat, sandwiched between two of the men. They shut the door, lock everything up, and, worst of all, there's no radio.

Peter wonders, vaguely, how long it will be before Lorna stops crying for him. He wonders when he'll be home.

\- - - - -

The hospital—is that what it is? It looks like one, but feels more like a prison—has a claustrophobic feel to it, all shiny metal floors and walls that look like they've been rusted over several times. It's gross, almost, but everything else is the typical setup: all squeaky gurneys and nurses in sterilized white.

Peter hasn't, however, seen anyone else here besides masked doctors and too-cheerful nurses, and perhaps that feeds the underlying anxiety starting to build inside him. He's thought of running several times already, but it's the thought of what they'll do to his family if he goes that always stops him.

His room is made of white tiled flooring and walls that resemble cement bricks, and all in all it's rather naked aside from the hospital bed in the center and a hard plastic chair against the wall, his suitcase on the floor beside it. There's nothing much to do but sit on the bed and wait around until the nurse comes back to walk him around the floor. He digs around in his suitcase and places the two pictures on the single table beside the chair, and arranges them nicely.

Then, the door opens.

“Peter?”

The nurse is back—her name is Linda, if he remembers right—and she stands with a smile in the doorway, gesturing to the hall. He's still not used to the outfit, either—a white tunic and off-blue cotton pants—and walks along quietly beside her while she rambles on about what they'll be doing, rattling off all sorts of technical terms left and right.

He observes the nasty, rusted walls as they go and ignores her, noting only how oppressively dark this place feels. He wonders, fleetingly, if he's going to die here. Linda—or whatever her name is—suddenly pinches his arm hard beneath two bright pink fingernails, and he flinches.

“Sorry,” she apologizes sweetly. “It's just going to be like that, though.”

“What?”

“The suppressor rod,” she explains, and then holds her hands out about the length of the pen attached to her clipboard. “It's just this long, and we're going to put it right here on the inside of your leg.” She stops to tap the inside of her thigh, and then continues on down the hall. “It's not going to get rid of anything, of course, but it's going to mute all your little skills so that you can function properly!” She's too enthusiastic about it, as if his mutation made him entirely separate from the population of the human race.

“Doesn't that sound nice?”

One of the rooms they pass by is very much like his—empty, save for a few pieces of obligatory furniture, and lined with a long, wide window beside the door to look through. A girl inside—a few years older than Lorna, but still rather young—is screaming, being strapped down onto her bed while she seizes and flails about. Her eyes are milky white, the same ivory as her hair, and it's absolutely terrifying to watch her jerk around like that. It's like something out of a horror film.

He gives Linda a nervous look, but she merely smiles and pushes him on. “Oh, that's nothing. Some of them have different reactions to the rod, but it can't really be helped. We try and adapt things as we go, but we keep them here while they recover. As long as they're out of harm's way, you know?”

Before he can object or make any other comment, she stops and opens a door on the left of the hall.

“Oh! Here we are. In you go, and when you come out, you'll be good as new!”  
He very much doubts that.

\- - - -

It's been six days since those men were in her living room. Six days, without any word, and Magda is starting to worry. It's the eleventh time that she's tried calling the number they left behind, but it seemingly doesn't exist. Then, thirty-five minutes into her efforts, she lets the phone hang down by its cord, slides to the floor, and cries.

He's gone.

He's gone, and she simply let them take him.

God, how could she be so _stupid?_

“Mama?”

Lorna's voice brings her head up out of her hands, and the little girl comes across the kitchen to stare sadly at her mother. “Peter isn't coming back, is he?”

She holds her daughter, and they both cry for their loss. Lorna is howling, beating her hands against the linoleum floor, and she babbles because she's angry, and she has a tendency to rant when she's upset.

“I don't get it,” she sobs, stopping to clutch to her mother's hand. “I want Peter back! Why did they want him? He—He was just _special_. Like how I'm special. Like the claw-man that came to take Peter on TV. And he's not gonna...gonna come back! And—”

Magda pauses, thinking, and then she remembers the strangers who came pulling her son along to the Pentagon in the first place, who put him wherever he is now. She stands up from Lorna and goes digging through the stack of papers on the edge of the kitchen counter—bills, magazines, notes—and finds the scrap of paper buried among it.

When they'd come asking for Peter, and Lorna had shown them how pretty the silverware looked when it flew, that Xavier had hurriedly left Magda his number and contact information, if she was ever interested in sending her kids to develop their powers.

She didn't trust him, no, and she certainly didn't want her kids to have anything more to do with him, but he had gotten them into this, and he was going to be the one to fix it.

The phone rings four times before someone on the other end answers.

“ _Hello? This is Hank. Can I ask who's calling?”_

“I was given this number in order to speak to a Mr. Charles Xavier. There's a problem concerning my son, Peter...”

\- - - -

They didn't originally intend to send out a rescue mission, by any means, but it's a serious enough problem that all parties have been undoubtedly affected by the disappearances. Mutant testing underneath the government's nose was the last thing that Charles wanted to have happen, especially when said mutants were having their powers forcibly—and sometimes, painfully—removed from them via metallic suppressors.

And, with all parties affected, it was easy enough to band together enough powerful mutants to make a stand and infiltrate the place. Erik had come along to rescue a few persons he clearly found important to his cause—whomever they were—but had so far had as little contact with Charles as was possible.

So, it was going to be _that_ sort of a day.

However, it meant that they had someone that their adversaries would fear, and that was key.

So here he was, Hank beside him (though he _insisted_ that he could wheel himself around, honestly), entering the front room of the establishment he had just sent everyone else into. Most of the doctors—is that what they were calling themselves?—had already been pulled out of the place, and all that was left to do was escort the mutants out, and get them back on their feet.

Charles doesn't want anyone else getting caught up in this, but there's a blonde woman standing at the front counter, leaning impatiently over it, and he knows that it's going to be hard to keep _her_ out, at least.

“Mrs. Maximoff? God, go home, please. We can handle this, I'd rather you not—”

“I just got here,” Magda says sharply, frowning. Her eyes are red—she'd definitely been crying recently. “And I'm not going home until I get my son back.”

And how the hell did she even know where this building is? Charles doubts that she would have been left an address—the place was well-hidden, he had to say—so she couldn't have found her way over unless....

When he looks over his shoulder up at Hank, the boy smiles sheepishly.

“I couldn't stop her,” he admits weakly. “When she called, she, uh, threatened me until I cracked...she's a very violent woman.”

Well, it was too late to get her out of the building, but Charles still wanted her out of the way.

“I won't make you leave, Mrs. Maximoff. But I have to insist that you stay here, please. We're trying to secure the building, and I can't promise your safety if you wander around. Have a seat, and I'll get back to you or send someone for you when I find out what's going on. Alright?”

She seemed satisfied with that—thank god—and sunk into one of the cushioned chairs along the wall, her bag clutched tightly in her lap.

They'd known little to nothing about this place, originally. It had only been rumors, but when Magda had called it was evident that they would have to call up whomever was still willing to talk to them and stage a recovery. It had seemed like nothing more than a scary story passed around to scare young mutants: _'they'll snatch you up and put a tiny little rod inside you that stops your powers cold.'_

It looks very much like something out of a horror novel, Charles has to say. The wide windows that line the rusted hall give him a view of each room: blank, empty little places with mutants—most of them young, even children—strapped down or cowering in the corner.

It's horrifying. The place is filled with the sound of people crying, soft whispers as his own comrades try organizing everyone, the rustle of cups as water is passed around and the murmur of blankets being wrapped around shoulders. Everything is more of a relief effort, somehow, and he wonders how this many mutants were taken up without anyone noticing. The men always said they were from the government—Magda had said they called themselves 'agents'—but it was unlikely that the government knew anything about this operation.

The patients are far from alright, he notes, as they walk by him to sit down against the walls in the hallway. Some are still trembling, shaking, and more dangerous others still in their rooms. The side effects vary, from what he can tell, and no one wants to risk letting those ones out of the cells until they know how to safely remove the rods.

He merely watches in awe and with a vague sense of disgust, and then Alex comes jogging down the hall, weaving between the crowd.

“How far does this go on?” Charles asks immediately. “The rooms? How many are there? How many kids?”

“It's like a grid, I think.” Alex makes a gesture with his hands. “Like a box, with aisles through it. Could be hundreds.”

“God.”

The first thing that Charles thinks is, ' _How long has this been going on?'_ The place looks ancient, and he doubts that it's a recent project of theirs. This place may have contained years of work, and all this time, they never knew...

Alex puts a hand on his shoulder, snaps him out of it. “You wanted the Maximoff kid?”

“You found him?”

“There aren't a lot of charts, but I think someone else recognized him. Silver hair?”

“Yeah. Where is he? Is he alright?”

He should have known it wasn't okay when Alex didn't answer him directly, but instead began guiding him through the people. “His room's this way.”

\- - - -

“He's alive?”

“He's breathing. Not conscious, but breathing. They must have just put him through a couple of days ago. Four at most, a nurse said.”

This is not the Peter that Charles remembers. The shitty, snarky, too-fast-for-his-own-good little punk now looks like little more than a corpse that's still breathing. He's a pale, blank-faced body still strapped down to a gurney. He's not sure why they would have still left him tied down if he was unconscious, but he'd rather not find out.

“Do you know why he's like this? None of the others were unconscious,” Charles points out.

Alex had been interrogating some of the staff before his arrival, and had gotten quite a few details out of those that were willing to talk.

“They said that effects were generally connected to power manifestation, so I'm assuming from what you've told me that it probably jumped straight for his nerves and was too strong. Probably his head, too. Could have drained all of the neural activity up there, I suppose.

“So do we take the rod out to reverse the effects?”

“We don't know how to safely remove it. We've got three staff who know how to and are willing to cooperate, but we'll have to wait until we get everyone out of here to go through with it.”

It's not ideal, but Charles supposes that it will have to do. As long as they can clear out, then they can start organizing everything and sending everyone back out. He wonders if the house is clean enough for this many visitors yet...

There's a shout from the hall that interrupts him, and when Hank comes back into the cell with crooked glasses and a developing bruise on his cheek, Charles knows that it can't mean anything good.

“You told Magda we found her son?”

“Yeah. I tried to tell her to go back, that we'd handle things, but...” He motions to the destruction on his face.

“We can't have her here, she can't see him like this!”

_“Peter!”_

There is nothing quite like the shattered shriek of a heartbroken mother, and her cry reverberates down the hall, silencing some of the whispers from patients and rescuers alike. Charles tries desperately to placate her— _It's alright, I promise, he's just sleeping, really—_ but eventually he realizes that it's helpless, and simply gets out of her way. She cries as if he were dead and gone, and it surely looks like that, the way that his torso leans limply against her arms.

“That's not my son—put him back the way he was!”

“We're going to try. You have my number, Mrs. Maximoff. I'll give you a call. In the meantime, do go home and try to get some rest, alright? I'll be sure to call.”

She leaves under Alex's steady support, still sobbing, and Charles sincerely hopes that it's a promise he can keep.

\- - - - -

He remembers something like a long, thick needle being forced hard into his leg, and then nothing: a numbing sort of silent darkness with no meaning of time or being. Then, after a long, long time, there is light, milky and blurred as it comes slowly into focus.

_“Peter? Do you think he can hear me, even? I mean, some of the unconscious ones didn't...”_

_“He'll be fine, Hank. Look, here he comes.”_

He opens his eyes, and then shuts them again when the ceiling light comes bright and blinding down on him.

“Where the _fuck_ am I?”

“That's him, alright,” Charles says confidently from the bedside. “Go on and get the next one done, Hank. I'll stay with him.”

One of the blurry outlines over him leaves noisily—everything is so loud—and then there's only one beside him, helping him sit up while he holds his throbbing head in his hands.

“God, my head hurts like hell...”

“Welcome to my world. Other than that, how do you feel?”

“Like I've been stabbed in the leg. Please tell me I can still walk.”

“It might be a few days.”

“Ah, shit.”

Peter shakes the headache off, stretches in the bed, and then looks around while everything begins to solidify around him. The room is neat and very neutral, but it lacks the starch of a hospital. It's definitely a welcome change from the hospital he'd been in before.

Before...?

It all comes back in a rush to him, and it's then that he knows, for sure, that he hadn't been with Charles Xavier before, in this place.

“I'm not gonna waste time and ask where this is,” Peter says, “but I do want to know what the hell happened.”

“There were quite a few of you locked up in there. We went in and had to get everyone out. The rod's gone, we've taken it back out, but it looks like it still might be a few days before you find yourself back to normal. Did quite a number by shutting you down, you know.”

“Ugh.” It explains why he feels like lead, though. He thinks more, despite the fact that it hurts to do so. “Where's...my mother? Is she okay? I mean, knowing her, she probably came looking for me, and—”

He's talking a mile a minute, but stops when Charles' face stiffens slightly. It's not very noticeable, but Peter catches it.

“What happened to her?”

He decides not to lie to him.

“She called us first, and that's why we got everyone out. She was already there, of course, trying to find you on her own. And I told her to stay put, but she eventually followed through, and you were unconscious, strapped up to a bed, and she...found her way to us. I....she was very upset, Peter. She thought you were dead.”

“And...? I'm not! Where is she?”

Charles bites his lip, only a little. “She couldn't make it out of the building, her legs were shaking so badly. She blamed herself, Peter. I couldn't get her to stop crying. She was inconsolable. And, in the end, I had to do...something I regret very much, but it will save her that trauma and pain, and it will surely keep any third parties away from her—”

“What the _fuck_ did you do?!”

“I wiped her mind.”

Peter laughs nervously, just a little amused chuckle that rings with disbelief. “Okay. She doesn't remember seeing me like that. Fair enough. Better she doesn't remember the whole thing, you know.”

“It's not selective like that, Peter. If she doesn't remember you like that, she...I'm so sorry. She doesn't remember you at all anymore.”

“What?”

He's not too sure if he says that, or if he simply thinks it. Nothing comes out of his mouth. Nothing but a soft, sad little gasp from the back of his throat. Then, gently, in a whisper that sounds too much like him when he was five years old, and he was scared and hiding under the bed from the thunder outside:

_“What?”_

His mother, who had raised him singlehandedly with a stern resolve and a warm heart.

His mother, who had coddled him close when he ran too fast down the hallway and hit the bookshelf, or was there to cry with him when the kids at school gave him the second black eye that week.

His mother, who had sent Wanda away because it was best, and the mother who Peter refused to talk to for a week because of it, only to come into her room late one night with no words and only apologetic tears. It was the first time he had slept in that big bed since he was nine.

His mother, who put up with the neighbors' scorn and the constant flood of police officers at her door at four in the morning and three in the afternoon and eleven at night, who would only kiss him on the forehead instead of beating him senseless like any other mother would.

His mother, who would go downstairs the next morning, look around at all of the shit piled in the basement, and wonder for only a second, “Whose is this?” before brushing it all away and throwing it all out.

His mother, who would look at the silver-haired boy in the photographs and wonder, “Who was he?” every day for the rest of her life.

 _His_ mother.

Not anymore.

She didn't know him anymore.

She probably wouldn't even recognize him if they passed on the street.

And that hurt more than any suppressor rod or bullet ever would.

Peter had never really cried in front of anyone else before—it was stupid to think it was a sign of weakness, but he had always thought so.

But now, he just stared at his hands, feeling so much that he'd lost something he could never get back, and he cried. Sobs came rolling in from some broken, desperate place inside his heart he had never felt before.

“I'm sorry.”

Charles pulls him in like the father Peter had never met, never knew, and for a good few minutes he screams and cries, beating on the poor man's chest so hard that he knows there will be bruises, because it's _his fault, he did this, he took her away, he made her forget._

And Charles only sits there and takes it, waits and holds him and hushes him softly until his screaming softens and his tears dry on his face. He relaxes, in his arms, and takes one long, deep breath.

“What about Lorna?”

“Your mother knows her. She's safe.”

“Does Lorna know me?”

“I'm afraid not.”

And that hurts just as much, he thinks.

“I'm sure that once your mother knows about Lorna's powers, she'll seek us out. Or we'll contact her. But she won't remember us, or you. You could come with us, then, if you'd like.”

“No.” Peter sits back, and bites down as an attempt to keep from lapsing into another flurry of tears. “No, that would hurt. I can't see them anymore.”

“That's your choice,” Charles tells him softly.

“Wanda?” Peter asks hopefully.

“Your mother doesn't know her, either. Lorna wouldn't, so we didn't have to take that from her memories. I thought I'd look around for her, though. I'd like to have her with us, here, if that's alright. And you, too, if you'd like to stay.”

He explains his plan, his idea, the X-Men, and Peter thinks that it's not a bad idea. _Yes,_ he tells Charles. _Yes, I'll stay. Could I have a moment?_

 _Of course_ , he says, and takes his leave.

His suitcase lies, untouched, against the wall, and Peter stands on unsteady legs to open it. He pulls out the pictures that someone had repacked for him, and puts on the silver jacket he'd folded up at the bottom.

Then, on the top, Lorna's tiara and wand. With the utmost dignity, he smooths his hair back and places the tiara on top. He gathers the pictures in his arms, sits back on the bed, and spends forever weeping for what he's lost.

When Charles asked him to stay, he didn't think he could cry over that. What else could he say? There wasn't any place for him to go.

Not anymore.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'M NOT CRYING YOU'RE CRYING  
> I literally cried writing this. But it had to be done.


End file.
